


all we ever wanted was everything

by xylodemon



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-03-29
Updated: 2012-03-29
Packaged: 2017-11-02 16:26:46
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,625
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/371037
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/xylodemon/pseuds/xylodemon
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When Jeyne Westerling wed Robb Stark, she also wed the north.</p>
            </blockquote>





	all we ever wanted was everything

**Author's Note:**

  * For [midnightblack07](https://archiveofourown.org/users/midnightblack07/gifts).



> Written for the [](http://got_exchange.livejournal.com/profile)[**got_exchange**](http://got_exchange.livejournal.com/) [Comment Exchange](http://gotexchange-mod.livejournal.com/1067.html). Title from Bauhaus, with all apologies.

Riverrun was very different from the Crag, much larger and far more beautiful. It rose up between the Tumblestone and the Red Fork like a sword, tall and proud, commanding a view of the Riverlands that took Jeyne's breath away. She still felt like a stranger here -- in this place, with its people -- but Robb was kind, and Rollam's earnest attempts to act like a proper squire were enough to make Jeyne smile. She walked through the dappled shadows of the godswood when Robb was with his men, or sat on the balcony of Hoster Tully's solar and listened to the water rush past the walls. 

Robb rarely spoke of his war councils, but Jeyne had heard enough to know he planned to fight his way back to Winterfell. The idea of Winterfell scared her a little, the ancient seat of the Kings in the North -- she imagined it as a hard place, cold and carved from ice, guarded by silent, grim-faced men with frost on their swords and snow piled around their feet, the kind of men who direwolves followed into war.

_You have wed the north,_ Lady Catelyn had said, her voice soft, almost wistful, _as I did._

Robb's northern lords did not like Jeyne. They treated her gently and showed her every courtesy, but their eyes narrowed whenever she walked by, and their smiles were just sharp twists to their mouths. 

_He should have taken a northern wife,_ Jeyne thought sadly, running her fingers over the rough sandstone walls. The training yard was loud with the ringing of swords, and Riverrun's Master-at-Arms was patiently showing Rollam how to correctly fasten a gorget. _Even that Frey girl would have been better... she would have at least strengthened his ties to the river lords._

"Jeyne," Robb said, suddenly beside her, his hand warm and solid at the back of her neck. "I've been looking for you."

"You were busy with your maps," she said carefully, hoping she did not sound accusing. "I didn't want to bother you."

He smiled and pressed a soft kiss to her temple. "Have you eaten?" 

"Have you?" she asked. His breakfast had been bread and bacon, and the serving maid had taken nearly all of it away. "I was going to have Rollam bring you a plate when he is finished here."

"Have him bring two. I just spent an hour with the Greatjon... I could do with some quiet, and some time alone with you."

 

\--

 

Robb's beard was redder than his hair, bright even in the weak candlelight, and it tickled Jeyne's skin as his mouth moved up her jaw. He was gentle with her, always gentle; he smoothed one hand over her hip, brushed the other up her side and over the curve of her breast, pausing at the hollow of her throat. She shifted under him, wet and restless, pulling him closer, wanting him inside her. He kissed her, warm lips and slick tongue, breathed her name into the skin just behind her ear.

Their first bedding had been sudden and desperate, somewhat clumsy, enough that she could almost think he'd never been with a woman before. She doubted that was the truth, as handsome as he was and the heir of an ancient, noble House besides, and she would never dare to ask, but she liked the idea of it -- that she had been his first as much as he had been hers, that they were teaching each other, learning it together.

Robb slid into her slowly, his eyes closed and his fingers tracing her nipple, and he sighed against her mouth as she tilted her hips and wrapped her legs around his waist. She ran her hands up his arms, drew his fingernails down his back. The feverish ache inside her was twisting, building, and she arched up to meet him, urged him to take her faster, harder. 

She prayed to the Mother that this time she would quicken, that this time she would give him what he needed.

 

\--

 

"Grey Wind is part of him," Lady Catelyn said, her sewing forgotten in her lap. "If you truly love my son, you will learn to accept that."

"It frightens me," Jeyne admitted softly. In the stories, queens were always fearless and strong, but Jeyne doubted they'd ever faced a snarling direwolf with blood in its mouth. "I wish it didn't."

"My husband's gods are strange things, dark and often cruel. A gift from them should not be taken lightly."

_Hard gods, hard men_. Lord Hoster's solar was sunny and bright, and Catelyn's hair flashed like copper as it spilled over her shoulder. Jeyne smoothed her skirts, watching a spray of wispy clouds drift past the window; as much as she wanted to, she could not forget she had seen Grey Wind kill. She had seen Robb kill as well, but a clean stroke from a sword seemed far less terrible than a ravaged belly or throat, bloody and raw. 

"Those direwolves were a gift. One for each of my children... for Ned's children." Catelyn met Jeyne's eyes, frowning slightly. "I think Sansa and Arya would be here with me now if they hadn't lost theirs on the Kingsroad."

_You wed the north._

"Robb is all I have left," Catelyn continued, her voice quiet but firm. "If I had my way, he would have Grey Wind with him day and night."

 

\--

 

She found him at his maps again, the candles burning low and an untouched plate of mutton waiting at his elbow. His hair was hanging in his face, creased near his temples from the weight of his crown, and his eyes looked shadowed and hollow. He sighed heavily and tapped his fingers on the table; she slid her hand up his arm, stroked her thumb over the skin below his ear.

"Jeyne."

She kissed him, tugging open his breeches as she climbed into his lap, took him inside her before he could say he was too busy, her tongue in his mouth and her arms around his neck.

 

\--

 

They took supper in Lord Hoster's solar, a delicious wild boar roasted with mushrooms and apples, but Robb ate distractedly, frowning at his maps as he pushed his food around his plate. Clouds covered the darkening sky, threatening heavy rains. The shadows under Robb's eyes were the color of an old bruise, and the silence was weighted, seemed to pull at Jeyne's skin.

"I intend to march on the Ironborn after Edmure's wedding," Robb said finally, still frowning at his maps.

Jeyne knew this much already; Robb's northern lords were anxious to return home, and Riverrun held few secrets. "How long will you be gone?" 

"I don't know. Even if my plan works, and I am able to bring a force on Moat Cailin from the north... it could still come to starving them out. That could mean a year."

"A year?" 

Robb reached for her hand, his mouth taking the grim, northern line she'd seen too often of late. "Jeyne, if I should be killed--"

She took a sharp breath; her throat felt tight and a slow ache hollowed her chest. Robb's men spoke too freely in front of Rollam, so she'd heard all the things that were whispered in the dining hall and training yard, about Sansa's Lannister husband and Robb's bastard brother in the Night's Watch. It would be another week before she knew if her blood was coming; she wanted so desperately to give him something besides empty promises, and now he was leaving her, could be gone as long as a year.

"Don't say such things," she whispered finally, tears stinging the corners of her eyes.

He looked uncertain, in the way men often did when a woman began to cry, and she swallowed the lump in her throat, bit the inside of her cheek. 

"If I should be killed," he repeated, more firmly than before, catching her wrist as she tried to pull her hand from his, "I want you to--"

"No," she said, rising from her chair. _A hard man with hard gods. He'll need a hard woman, as well_. She walked over to him and brushed her fingers through his hair; it was disheveled, curling wildly around his face. "You will not be killed."

"Jeyne."

"If the gods are kind, I am already carrying your child," she said, sliding her hand over his cheek. "Go to Moat Cailin and rid yourself of the Ironborn. If that means a year, then it means a year." She sighed and pressed a kiss to his temple. "I will miss you, but hopefully you will come back to a son we can bring to Winterfell."

 

\--

 

They said goodbye the first time in the grey hours before dawn, with urgent kisses and grasping hands and his teeth at her neck as he spent his seed inside her. They said it again an hour later, when they should have been eating breakfast; he took her against the wall of his bed chamber, her hands in his hair and his fingers digging into her hips, and she moaned his name as he drew her nipple into his mouth, hoped this time he would leave a piece of himself inside her.

It was raining the last time, and she rode out to meet him, her cloak sodden and her hands shaking with the cold. She barely flinched as Grey Wind approached her, because Grey Wind was a gift and her husband was from the north, and she shouldn't have cried when he touched her cheek, but his hair was wet and his beard was too long and his eyes were the perfect shade of blue.

"Come back to me," she whispered.

Robb smiled and said, "I will."


End file.
